Review By: Stephanie Kenific
Published: 2025
Genre(s): Fantasy
Audience: Grades 9 to 12
Content Warnings: Violence, mild sexual content, demons
Goodreads Link: That Devil, Ambition
Publisher’s Summary:
There is only one school worth graduating from, and it creates as many magicians as it does graves…First in his class and last in his noble line, Fabian Galloway’s only hope of a good future is passing his elite school’s honors class. It’s only offered to the best thirteen students, and those students have a single assignment: kill their professor.
If they succeed, their student debt is forgiven. However, if an assassination attempt fails or the professor is alive at the end of the year, the students’ lives are forfeit. And dealing with the professor, a devil summoned solely to kill or be killed, is no easy task. Fabian isn’t worried, though. He trusts his best friends—softhearted math genius Credence and absent-minded but insightful Euphemia—to help. After all, that’s why he befriended them. As the months pass and their professor remains impossibly alive, the trio must use every asset they have to survive. Or else failure will be on their academic records—and their tombstones—forever.
Review:
That Devil, Ambition is a YA dark academia fantasy centered on three students, Fabian, Euphemia, and Creedence, who enroll in an elite honors class at the Stellarium, a magical university. Their assignment is simple but deadly: summon a demon professor and find a way to kill him before the year ends. If they fail, they die. Fabian secretly strikes a deal with the Professor to protect his two friends, but the rest of the class is driven by ambition, sabotage, and desperation.
The reviewer found this book difficult to connect with. Despite an intriguing premise and an early plot twist, the characters felt underdeveloped and the pacing slow. The mystery of how the Professor could be “killed” was the most engaging element, and the final solution delivered a clever surprise. Overall, the reviewer would not broadly recommend this title except to highly motivated dark academia readers.
